Indian-origin judge appointed to S Africa's highest judicial bench
Johannesburg (PTI): Narandran 'Jody' Kollapen, who is Indian origin, has been appointed to South Africa's highest judicial bench, the Constitutional Court.
President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday announced the appointment of 64-year-old Kollapen and Rammaka Steven Mathopo as the latest additions to the Constitutional Court after a lengthy process of public interviews.
Kollapen and Mathopo were among the five candidates recommended to Ramaphosa in October this year for the two vacancies.
Both will take office from January 1, 2022.
Kollapen was interviewed twice before for appointment to the Constitutional Court but was unsuccessful then despite having served two terms as an acting judge of the same institution.
The Presidency said Kollapen and Mathopo have illustrious careers in the legal profession and the judiciary.
Kollapen, who has now been elevated from his position as a judge of the high court, started legal practice in 1982, focussing largely on public interest work. He joined Lawyers for Human Rights in 1993 and went on to become its national director in 1995, serving in that position until the end of 1996.
In 1997, he took up a post as commissioner of the South African Human Rights Commission and went on to serve as chair of the commission for seven years from 2002 until 2009. He was appointed as chair of the South African Law Reform Commission in April, 2016.
Kollapen serves on the structures of numerous NGOs and community-based organisations, including the Legal Resources Centre, the Foundation for Human Rights and Laudium Care Services for the Aged.
He has also been invited to speak on human rights issues across the world, including at the United Nations and Harvard University.
He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Durban University of Technology; the Turquoise Harmony Institute's award for his contribution to society in the area of law and human rights; and a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Congress of Business and Economics, which was born out of the erstwhile Transvaal Indian Congress from the days when Mahatma Gandhi was in South Africa.
In 2010, while in the position of acting Constitutional Court judge, Kollapen made a strong statement about cultural and national identity as the keynote speaker at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the religious organisation Siva Gnana Sabhay in Lenasia.
Kollapen said there was no need to shy away from the unique Indian identity, culture and religion brought to South Africa by the first indentured labourers 150 years earlier, but that South Africans of Indian-origin should use this to help build the rainbow nation as citizens of the country.
Kollapen's mother was among the women in the historic protest march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria, the seat of the apartheid-era government, in 1956 to protest discriminatory laws. She was arrested and jailed twice for her participation in passive resistance protests.
Kollapen often recalled how his mother had told him that she was pregnant with him at the time.
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Single higher education regulator bill tabled in LS; Oppn flags ‘centralisation,' JPC likely
New Delhi: A bill to set up a 13-member body to regulate institutions of higher education was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, which seeks to establish an overarching higher education commission along with three councils for regulation, accreditation, and ensuring academic standards for universities and higher education institutions in India.
Meanwhile, the move drew strong opposition, with members warning that it could weaken institutional autonomy and result in excessive centralisation of higher education in India.
The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, earlier known as the Higher Education Council of India (HECI) Bill, has been introduced in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The proposed legislation seeks to merge three existing regulatory bodies, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), into a single unified body called the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan.
At present, the UGC regulates non-technical higher education institutions, the AICTE oversees technical education, and the NCTE governs teacher education in India.
Under the proposed framework, the new commission will function through three separate councils responsible for regulation, accreditation, and the maintenance of academic standards across universities and higher education institutions in the country.
According to the Bill, the present challenges faced by higher educational institutions due to the multiplicity of regulators having non-harmonised regulatory approval protocols will be done away with.
The higher education commission, which will be headed by a chairperson appointed by the President of India, will cover all central universities and colleges under it, institutes of national importance functioning under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Education, including IITs, NITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, and IIITs.
At present, IITs and IIMs are not regulated by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Government to refer bill to JPC; Oppn slams it
The government has expressed its willingness to refer it to a joint committee after several members of the Lok Sabha expressed strong opposition to the Bill, stating that they were not given time to study its provisions.
Responding to the opposition, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government intends to refer the Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for detailed examination.
Congress Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari warned that the Bill could result in “excessive centralisation” of higher education. He argued that the proposed law violates the constitutional division of legislative powers between the Union and the states.
According to him, the Bill goes beyond setting academic standards and intrudes into areas such as administration, affiliation, and the establishment and closure of university campuses. These matters, he said, fall under Entry 25 of the Concurrent List and Entry 32 of the State List, which cover the incorporation and regulation of state universities.
Tewari further stated that the Bill suffers from “excessive delegation of legislative power” to the proposed commission. He pointed out that crucial aspects such as accreditation frameworks, degree-granting powers, penalties, institutional autonomy, and even the supersession of institutions are left to be decided through rules, regulations, and executive directions. He argued that this amounts to a violation of established constitutional principles governing delegated legislation.
Under the Bill, the regulatory council will have the power to impose heavy penalties on higher education institutions for violating provisions of the Act or related rules. Penalties range from ₹10 lakh to ₹75 lakh for repeated violations, while establishing an institution without approval from the commission or the state government could attract a fine of up to ₹2 crore.
Concerns were also raised by members from southern states over the Hindi nomenclature of the Bill. N.K. Premachandran, an MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party representing Kollam in Kerala, said even the name of the Bill was difficult to pronounce.
He pointed out that under Article 348 of the Constitution, the text of any Bill introduced in Parliament must be in English unless Parliament decides otherwise.
DMK MP T.M. Selvaganapathy also criticised the government for naming laws and schemes only in Hindi. He said the Constitution clearly mandates that the nomenclature of a Bill should be in English so that citizens across the country can understand its intent.
Congress MP S. Jothimani from Tamil Nadu’s Karur constituency described the Bill as another attempt to impose Hindi and termed it “an attack on federalism.”
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